Water Witch
by Andi Horton
Summary: Peter was always a little too single minded for his own good; after he is wounded in battle the King resolves to hunt down the only one who can save him, but instead finds something very different to what he expected. Golden Age fic.
1. Knight

Water Witch

O0O0O0O

_She leaned in low over the neck of her mare, and wondered why it seemed so imperative to gallop when she did not even know where they were going._

_The ground beneath Rya's hooves was hard and slippery, made dangerous by frost. If the mare were to stumble . . . but still, she could not persuade herself that it was not necessary to run, run, run._

_The winter was closing in. Not a winter such as they had ever seen before, but a winter such as they would never see again . . . or perhaps see for all time._

_But no. Not that. He had been quite clear about that when she had tried to turn back earlier that day, and found her way blocked by an angry Lion the size of a small cottage._

"_Why do you defy me, daughter?" he had roared. She had seen him gentle as a newborn lamb, with her little brother climbing all over him, nestling safe between the velvet paws. She had seen him flay skin from the backs of the monsters who had set upon her first hunting party that day, so very many years ago . . . she had been such a child, then. But looking on his face at that moment, seeing his wrath in the face of her defiance, she felt ever so much worse than a child._

"_My home," she had pleaded, "my home, I must go back, I must warn them__—__"_

"_You must press on or your home will be lost forever." His tail had whipped his flanks with dangerous impatience. "Do you think I do not know? Do you think any of this is hidden from Me? I know how it must be, but it will not be so if you do not do as I say."_

"_And it will save them? You promise it will save them?"_

"_I make no promises."_

"_But__—__ my mother, my brother . . . and Narnia! What of Narnia?"_

"_What of Narnia?" His eyes seemed to see through her, to pierce every pretence and expose her indecision for what it truly was. "Is it ever other than my own?"_

_Never._

_She had not said it, but he knew she thought it._

"_Only please . . . please, what is to become of it?" she had asked. Please, she hoped, please give me any excuse, any reason not to go on . . ._

"_Narnia will sleep." He was gentle even in reproof. "Then it will waken."_

"_Yes, but__—__ when? For how long?"_

"_Daughter, do you really need to know?"_

"_No, I__—__ I don't suppose, only . . . please, _please_, will I be there to see it?"_

_There were no secrets from him, no questions he could not answer__—__ only ones he did not choose to. He chose to answer this. He stared at her, and his reply was both a weight in her chest and lightness in her head._

"_You will be there. You will see it. But not as you imagine. Now," and there was to be no defying that command, she could not have kept herself from obedience even had she still wanted to, "GO."_

_And so they went, she and Rya, fleeing like fugitives from their own home. On they went, ever farther North, ever deeper into the cold. She had thought Rya a wonderful thing before today, but now she knew it to be so. The mare was relentless, never flagging, never stopping. Whether it was because she expected rest to come or because she knew there would not be any rest, ever, for them . . ._

_It didn't bear thinking._

_And then, suddenly, it was done. As surely as something had laid a hook in her belly, drawing them on, that something was released and they stood still, two shaking, silent shadows of what they had once been. Young pine trees rose around her. The water before her was clear as glass. Ice was edging it even now._

_The winter was almost there._

_Something about that water . . ._

_Rya felt it too. She stepped forward, nose extended. Smelling it._

"_This is the place. This is where it ends."_

_And then it PULLED, pulled them in, whatever it was they could not resist. It was cold, so cold, like knives stabbing all over, all at once, and then . . . dark._

O0O0O0O

Peter stood, and swayed, and thought of dying.

He wondered why he wasn't dead. He wondered how soon he might be. He knew for sure that he would be, and not, he thought, too long from now. He cursed himself for a feeble coward to wish that death might come quickly. Then he looked down at his side, where blood flowed far too freely, and suddenly all the world around him was dim and far off. A howling wind seemed to blow through his head, the ground gave way and Peter found he was suddenly just not there, anymore— his body fell, darkness closed in, and his mind drifted free of the battle that raged all around.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. When the petition for Narnian aid had come, it had seemed a simple enough thing to marshal troops and ride to the North; the ruler of the borderland, he who had enlisted Peter's help, had promised that the Narnian forces would be providing an invaluable service by freeing many people from the tyrannical rule of a despot.

What the border ruler had not mentioned — what Peter had not learned until it was too late — was that the tyranny was greatly exaggerated and the people in question actually didn't mind a bit of despotism, provided the despot managed to keep them all healthy and safe and generally thriving in their own way. Nor had the border ruler mentioned that the despot in question had in his possession a rich trove of mining land, which the border ruler had for years longed to call his own.

Too late Peter learned that Narnia had been made a pawn in a much bigger, uglier, older battle than he had been aware existed. Too late did he realise this, and so was forced to see his own people sell their lives dearly for a cause that was neither noble or even their own.

Peter had for days now longed for nothing more than to call for retreat. Let the quarrelling rulers sort this out amongst themselves, if they cared to. Let the Narnians only go home, and let them — oh, please, let them — forgive him for his part in all this.

But there were battles yet all around them, with no sure route of escape. And Peter, truth be told, feared the retaliatory anger of the arrogant ruler who had summoned him there. And so Peter had done what he could, casting aside his marked shield in favour of a plain wooden one that bore no device to identify him. Thusly equipped he had joined the troops that day on the field, and there had caught a deep blow from one opponent which had opened his side and knocked the king from his horse. Tarva, left riderless, had taken it upon himself to see an end to the one who had struck Peter— one brutal, precise blow of his hoof had felled the attacker, who did not rise again.

Now Peter, all these memories clouding what should have been the soundest sleep he'd had in a month, lay flat on the blood-soaked field with Tarva mounting a ruthless guard over him. And there he stayed, unaware, until both sides fell back, leaving behind only those who could no more rise— and Tarva, who struck out at any who dared approach him, until at last the Narnians decided he was going to be more trouble than he was worth, and took themselves back to camp.

Only as night fell did Peter wake once more. The wound in his side had stilled the worst of its flow, and though he was weak, and pale as death, he was able to take hold of Tarva's bridle when the horse lowered his head to nuzzle the King.

"Back," Peter gasped, "back," and Tarva obliged, stepping back and lifting his head, dragging the King to his feet.

For a moment Peter thought he would not be able to stay on them. But then his horse was beside him, bearing him up, and Peter leaned heavily on Tarva until his head settled once more.

There were no humans standing on the field save Peter himself, but there was activity aplenty. Birds descended to feast and pick small, shiny treasures from the armour of those who had fallen. Peter, seeing this by the light of a full moon, found it was beyond him even to feel revulsion at this; he had already felt revulsion enough at the betrayal his people had suffered since their arrival. Now he cared only to find the encampment, and determine if there was a safe way for them to retreat. If that was the last thing he did, he would consider his final hours well-spent.

"Tarva," he rasped, and Tarva's ears swivelled back in anticipation, "forward."

The stallion picked his footing as daintily as a maid making her first curtsey at court. He stepped with exquisite care, deeply conscious of how much of Peter's weight he bore, and Peter, leaning heavily on the horse, was glad of it. He needed first to reach the creek and wash his side; then he would return to camp.

The creek, which cut its own path through the rocky hillside, was cold and welcoming. Peter dropped to his knees beside it, stripped off stiffened, blood-soaked gauntlets and plunged his hands into the rushing waters. He first rinsed his hands, then raised water to his face and drank, lapping it from his hands with such urgency that he might have been a week in the desert. Then, in the act of bending to scoop up more, he froze— for the sound of drinking went on.

"Who goes there?" he demanded. His voice broke twice before he got the whole query out, and by that time he had his answer already— a hulking, dark shape on all fours had sped along the banks in answer to his challenge.

Peter groped for his sword, found his strength unequal to the task of drawing it, and simply laboured to raise his shield. Yet ere he could do so the thing spoke— a breathless, galloping sort of voice it had, and Peter knew at once what it was.

"Your Majesty!" the Dog panted. "Your Majesty is alive!"

"After a fashion," Peter said, and fell to coughing. "Which— who are you? I'm sorry, it's just so dark . . ."

"Oh yes, yes, of course— rum little noses you humans have, begging your Majesty's pardon, I'm sure. No need of daylight when you've a nose like mine, though— it's Two Shakes, Sire. From the stable pack, you know."

Peter did know. Cair Paravel had once had a single Hound pack, but when some of the Hounds had confessed their preference for life within the Cair and nearer the people they best loved, the pack had divided. Now the members of the castle pack were back at the Cair, while the stable pack had come north and made many futile sacrifices for the sake of a kingdom that wasn't even theirs.

"Two Shakes," Peter murmured. "You've been back to the camp, then?"

"Oh, yes, Sire. But you must come! Come, come, and they'll be so glad to find you well!"

"Only I'm not, now, am I?" Peter said. "Bleeding out my side, and— ho!" he hiked up his shield with such speed that it made his side scream in agony. But the hawk had not dived to strike— it sought only the familiar comfort of the King's glove, and was annoyed to instead skid along the surface of the makeshift rowan-wood shield.

"Why, that's Orison, isn't it then?" marvelled Two Shakes.

"'Tis," said Orison, still a little miffed at his rocky landing.

"Sorry," said Peter. "I thought—" and he looked over to the field where the ravens continued to feed.

"I," said Orison, "am no raven." He did not scold the king for thinking he was, of course, but it was plain he wished that he might.

"And what's wrong with being a Raven, I'd like to know!" came a raspy, affronted challenge from the field.

"I am sure I couldn't say," said Orison, and Peter began to cough again. He reached for the water in the creek once more but the raspy voice spoke out again, stopping him.

"Wouldn't do that, if I were you."

"Who _are_ you, then?" challenged Two Shakes. Like the rest of the stable pack he was a big, brawny, brindled creature, and the hackles raised along the back of his neck made him look bigger still as he addressed the birds on the field at large. "Are you friend or foe of this knight of Narnia?"

For it was Peter's own rule that he not be identified as King on the field.

"I am not friend or foe to anything," retorted the Raven, one from among hundreds of his kind on the field, both Talking and dumb. "I take what I can get where I get it. And I know if I were a knight, of Narnia or anywhere else, as badly wounded as _your_ knight, there— I'd not waste my time with a bit of stinking backwater. Won't help you, no, it won't."

"What, then, do you suggest?" Peter wondered. He thought again that he must be dying. He certainly did not feel as though he could live very much longer. If the Raven were not going to peck his eyes out while he yet lived, then he supposed he might at least spend a few of his last minutes alive hearing it out— it certainly seemed more inclined to honesty than the ruler who had lured Peter to the North in the first place.

"I," said the Raven, "would seek the witch."

For one moment the listeners were struck dumb. Then they all (save Tarva, of course, who understood none of this) reacted at once, and in great anger. Orison rose in furious flight, circling and screaming. Two Shakes bared his teeth and gave such a snarl that his whole body seemed to rattle from the force of it. For his part, Peter grabbed Rhindon and wished he had the strength to draw it— lacking that, though, he simply hissed "you cannot be a friend to Narnia if you give such advice."

"Suit yourself," croaked the Raven. "Suit yourself. You die here and more for me, more for me. But you've not died yet and if you'd rather not, there's none but the witch can restore you now."

"And how do you imagine that this treason would be accomplished?" Orison asked, fluffing his feathers in great anger. "Do you not know that she who bound us in ice is dead these many years?"

"Not _that_ witch," jeered the Raven. "Take me for a hatchling chick, do you? _She_ is dead, certainly. But they say as there's a witch lives by the western mere, you know. Never seen her myself, but I expect she must be there, else where'd the stories come from? And they do say as she'll give aid to any knight who makes his plea in a manner that pleases."

"I will beg no favours from any enchantress," Peter growled. The Raven was unperturbed by this declaration.

"Suit yourself, suit yourself," it said, then fell silent and, presumably, to eating.

"We must get you back to camp, Sire," Orison decided, having at last found purchase on the pommel of Tarva's saddle. "Else I fear you will indeed be breakfast for these ravens."

But Peter felt more keenly than ever how it was with his side, and he knew there was no "else" about it. He was dying. It only remained for him to choose where he was and what he was doing when he died— and Peter, who had ruined so much by his choice to march them all north, now found that he did not want to die tended by those he loved, whom he had doomed.

"No," he said. "No, we will seek the witch."

This declaration shocked both hawk and hound to silence.

"We will seek the witch," said Peter, "and I will make an end of her if it's the last thing I do."

No point, he thought, in telling them he knew that it would be.

"But Sire . . ." Orison danced uneasily from one foot to the other.

"No," said Peter. "This is what I will do. However—" he had already rallied far too many to follow him into destruction. "You need not accompany me, Orison. Nor you," to Two Shakes, "if you do not care to."

"What, not care to follow our king?" Orison was indignant.

"No indeed, indeed," Two Shakes said, and gave an energetic shake. "We will come, Sire, and if we can lend aid then we will aid you— need a bit of help, there?" For Peter was struggling to mount, but could not.

"Yes, thanks, I— hold on, though." And, with careful, painful movements he eased off as much of his armour as he could manage. The heaviest and most cumbersome pieces he cast down by the water, retaining only his breastplate with the Narnian standard of the red lion passant. His sword he kept strapped to his waist, and his horn as well; the wooden shield he held too, but the rest he left behind. Then he consented to put his foot to Two Shakes's head and be boosted up high enough to fit his other foot to the stirrup.

The pain of swinging his leg over Tarva's back was such that Peter would not even remember it afterward— his mind would not let him. The wound . . . was it still bleeding? Surely not, for if so he would be dead by now. But Peter could not shake the sensation that it was indeed still bleeding as he sat awkwardly on Tarva, and Orison took off from the saddle to seek out a Raven that might direct them to the western mere of which that first Raven had spoken. When he returned, his instructions were brief but more than sufficient for their purposes.

"She may be found beyond the Two-Stone pass," said the Hawk. "Whatever that may be. But he says if we keep to the path along the river, it will eventually feed out into the mere and we will have found her."

"Good enough," said Peter, and although he did not say so, he wondered if he would even live long enough to reach their destination.

I wish, for the reader's sake, that Peter's quest along the path that night had been the sort of journey about which ballads are sung. I wish that nearly every stride of the horse beneath him had not caused the king to cry out or gasp in pain, or even that Peter had been something other than alarmingly wild-eyed and single-minded in his quest. But I am afraid that Peter was on that night well beyond the steadiness that so characterised most of his rule; his failure to make the best choice for the people he led was doing a fine job of killing him all by itself, without any help from the deep cut in his side. The thought that he might at least rid the land of one vile thing before he died . . . it consumed him and spurred him on when he might ordinarily have fallen from Tarva's back due to sheer exhaustion. If he did nothing else before he left that world, he was determined that he would find and kill the witch.

For their part the animals focused mostly on the journey, rather than the idea of what lay at its end. Tarva moved with as much grace as any of the Southern-bred horses can; had Peter sat any other creature I am sure his life's blood would have been jarred from him in short order, but Tarva's pace was such that the Narnian king was even able to think through the pain.

Two Shakes coursed with his head held high, his nose in the air to sample the breezes. He smelled everything that could not been seen save in daylight, and more besides. As they left the stinging odours of the battle behind them he could better appreciate the moist, earthy scents of the forest and the sweet, bubbling freshness of the river.

Orison flew out in front of them, wings extended as he caught and coasted on the air currents passing by. He saw nothing to give him alarm, although he did spy a vole that he swooped down upon with a shriek of triumph.

They had been journeying some time when they were cut off suddenly by a great grey owl, a thing of such size that, when it swooped down from the sky, Orison was forced to cede space to it rather abruptly. As the Owl settled ominously on a branch that hung in their path, Orison flew down to join Peter, who had drawn Tarva to a halt. The Hawk chose to light on Peter's shoulder, the king's strength being unequal to the task of extending his glove.

"Hullo," he called to the Owl, "will you not let us pass? We have business further on."

The Owl craned its head to the side at a spectacular angle to study the travellers.

"Why do you wish to pass?" it asked. "Why have you come to this place? None ever come to this place."

"We seek the witch of the mere," said Peter.

"Oh, dooo you now?" the Owl hooted softly, and seemed to stare even harder. "And why do you think there is a witch at the mere?"

"Isn't there?" Orison ruffled up around his neck. "We were told there was a witch."

The Owl ruffled its own feathers in reply. "Believe everything you are told, do you? There are stories, yes, many stories. I have heard most, or all. I have never seen a witch."

"So— there's nothing there?" Peter found he could not even process the words. You see, he had been so focused on this goal that he could not accept it might not be so. The Owl, unaware of Peter's investment in the quest, was undismayed.

"There is Something," it said.

"What?" Peter demanded.

"Something," the Owl repeated. It craned its neck again to study Peter. "If you can reach the water; if you can make the mere give up its secrets . . . then you will know."

"Know _what_?" Peter roared, then abruptly bent forward, coughing. His side burned as though on fire.

"Nobody knows," said the Owl. "But you will." And then it took wing, leaving the path clear and the travellers sorely confused as well as footsore.

"Onward, then," said Peter, and they continued not much further along the path before the land dipped down before them, and a pass of two tall, straight stones rose up, guarding the entrance to a small valley. And there, framed between the pair of stones, lay the waters of a wide mere. The river fed into it, the shores splitting to allow the water to pool into the body of the lake. It sparkled brilliantly beneath the light of the moon, and for just one moment Peter forgot his quest and his pending death in order to marvel at the silent beauty of the scene before him.

Then they pressed on, continuing down through the narrow pass and into the valley below. Not much later they reached a soft expanse of lush grass, with the mere only yards away. Tarva came to a gentle halt of his own accord, and Peter, with great pain and much help from Two Shakes, eased himself out of the saddle and down to the ground.

"Might as well have a bite to eat," he breathed, resting a fond hand on the stallion's neck. "You've more than earned it . . . and you, my friend," nodding to Two Shakes, "please, do lie down. Orison, rest you well." He stood back from them all, feeling almost like an onlooker in his own exchange with them. "I think . . . this part must be done alone. But if you hear my call," he pressed one hand to the horn strapped to his waist, "answer at once, for I fear that before this night is done I will once again find myself in need of your service."

"And you shall have it, Sire," Orison said. Two Shakes, though he had collapsed in a heavy heap of large, weary, winded dog, also added his promise to that of the Hawk.

Then Peter left them there, finding his way from the grassland down to the shore of the little lake. Ringed as it was by tall pine trees and limed in moonlight, for just a moment Peter could imagine it as it must have looked during that long enchanted winter. He wondered if the witch he had come to kill was a witch such as he would recognise, or if the mysterious Something of which the Owl had spoken was perhaps one last remnant of the original Witch's forces.

Not that it mattered, really; he doubted he would survive to see the end of it, whatever it was, but at least he would die fighting to bring that end about— and not on the field of a battle in which nobody should have taken a part. He trusted that Orison, Two Shakes and even Tarva would be able to finish what he would begin here. As for how best to begin it . . .

He studied the water thoughtfully. Make the mere give up its secrets, the Owl had said. As to how best to do that . . . he cast around and his gaze lit on a small clump of flowers growing on the shore. In the daytime they would be a bright, sunny golden colour, but the moonlight was still bright enough that Peter was left no doubt as to what they were— the same flowers whose petals they crushed and steeped in water to make a serum which often persuaded captured opponents to make free with their secrets. The flowers didn't offer anything like a certainty, even when used on humans, but there was something undeniably handy about them being there tonight. Indeed, the little patch almost seemed to have been planted expressly for this purpose.

With great difficulty Peter bent, caught hold of the flowers and plucked them. The aroma was heady, especially for such small blossoms; one flower was crushed in his palm, and the scent of it made Peter's head lighten still further. He nearly blurted out, to the silent lake, that he had accidentally freed Susan's kitten from her room, causing it to wander the Cair all night until it was found in one of the castle guard's boots the next morning.

He wondered what the mere would make of that.

Satisfied, then, with the potency of the flowers and supposing that this had at least as good a chance of working as anything did, Peter drew back his arm and cast the petals onto the water.

"Let's see what you're hiding, then," Peter murmured, his eyes fastened on the mere.

Whatever he had expected, it was not what happened next. For one minute he almost thought nothing would happen at all— the petals drifted aimlessly, seeming only to float as ordinary flowers would do. But then the tiny ripples they cast deepened, and brightened, and there came from the shallow depths of the mere a golden light that made it seem for a moment as though Peter looked not into the bottom of a lake, or even at a reflection of the world above, but rather at a picture of how the world above must have looked on a late autumn afternoon long ago when the pines were young and the ground in which they were rooted had never known such a thing as interminable winter.

And then suddenly the picture was gone, shattered as the water erupted in a geyser of confusion, some great, wet, heavy THING surging up from its depths, foundering a moment on the bank and then finding purchase on the rocky soil on the far side of the water.

Peter struggled to understand what it was that he saw— for the very briefest of moments he mistook her for a Centaur, but the girl wore a cloak of some kind, and no Centaur anyone has ever met would ever consent to such an indignity. His own disbelief heated Peter's face— was she truly half human, half horse? But the dripping wet apparition was fleeing, so there was no more time to wonder. He grabbed the horn, put it to his mouth and blew with breath he hadn't known he possessed. The clarion call echoed 'round the hills and before it had fully faded he heard the thunder of Tarva's approach, the scream of the Hawk and the bay of the Hound.

How Peter found the strength to swing onto Tarva's back will probably always be a mystery. The horse did not slacken his pace, and just as well, for the little mare-girl ahead of them had already nearly vanished from sight. The king had no strength to urge Tarva on, but Tarva did not require urging. The instinct for the race was bred deep within him and he bent his very soul to the sport, extending himself long and low over the ground and pounding after the fleet-footed thing ahead.

"The mare," Peter shouted in the general direction of Two Shakes. "Take the mare!" And to Orison, who wheeled and screamed over head, he shouted, "the maid!" Though he did not know what sort of maid she must be, to be melded with a horse that leaped from the water like a fish.

Two Shakes did indeed leap at the mare, teeth bared, and Orison dove for the maiden, but mare and maid were having none of it. The horse wheeled and struck out, baring her teeth and rolling her eyes in true horsy panic. She screamed a warning to her attackers, and the girl on her back — Peter could see, now, they were joined no more permanently than he and Tarva were joined — screamed, too.

It was Tarva who reacted first, skidding to a dead stop. He was as much possessed of his instincts as any stallion can be, and the sound of the mare's terror and rage warned him that he would be risking his life to come any closer. Peter, so drained of his very self, was not equal to the task of staying on during such an abrupt halt and so went flying over Tarva's head.

Had he landed on the path, he would likely have broken his neck and that would have been the end of him. Instead he chanced to land on the soft, springy shoulder, which hurt him horribly but did not kill him— at least, not any more than he had already been killed that night. As he lay there, groaning, he was vaguely conscious of the maid and mare detaching themselves from one another. The mare was prancing in high agitation, but the girl in the cloak seemed almost unspeakably calm.

Two Shakes did not lunge for her. Orison did not dive at her.

She stood on the ground, in the middle of the path, and she stared at Peter where he lay. Peter, staring back, felt his heart grow cold and heavy within him.

This was a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. And he knew he would regret it all the more ere he ever saw home again.

O0O0O0O

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** This has been brewing for a while, now. Stan Rogers has got a wild, wonderful song called "Witch of the Westmorland" and from the first time I heard it, I knew I was going to have to write fic for it! If you can track it down and listen to it, by all means do.

This is part one of two, with the second part due to follow shortly after I post the next chapter of _Kingdoms Come_. In the meantime, please know that Narnia, love it though I do, is not mine; CS Lewis loved it first.


	2. Maid

O0O0O0O

_She floated through nothing until it woke her, that bright and burning thing, that explosion of gold and stars._

_She drew breath as though she had not drawn it for a century. Her body hurt, her whole self burned. It was cold, so cold, and then not quite as much . . . and still, Rya ran._

_The scream of the hawk, the bay of the dog__—__ Rya would not stand for it. She whirled, she struck, she warned them with snapping, square teeth and wild, white-rimmed eyes. A horse such as looks like that is not a horse to be trifled with, and the animals fell back to a safe distance. Rya's sides heaved; she had been running for so very, very long, but she would go down fighting or not at all._

_And then he was there, the dying one, the shadow of a shadow, the palest shadow she had ever seen__. He fell from his horse, he fought to rise, and he wanted to kill her__—__ the look in his eyes was the look of the monsters that had set on them that day in the woods so many lifetimes ago. But today there was no Lion to flay him, there was only a gaping wound in his side; a wound that would drain the life from the one who sought to be her murderer._

_And she could not let that be._

O0O0O0O

Peter staggered, gasping, to his feet. The maid who stood motionless and stared at him may not have been joined with the mare as he had first thought, but he had no reason not to believe that she was not as dangerous and evil a thing as he first believed. With the last scraps of strength remaining to him, he grasped Rhindon and drew it; held it aloft. His shield he fought to raise, and he hated, oh how he hated, the look of deep pity and gentle horror on the girl's face as she saw the pain this caused him.

"Please," she said, and her voice was so ordinary that it was far more jarring to hear than had she shrieked in foul, secret riddles, "please, don't do that; you're hurt, I see. Oh please, do put them down or you'll only hurt yourself more."

It was something like Susan might have said, Peter thought, and with that thought he dropped, empty, drained of everything that had to this point kept him going. Because if she could sound so much like his sister, then whatever she might be, she was not anything he had thought she was.

She moved quickly toward the fallen man, halting only at a warning growl from Two Shakes. They might not have braved the terrified anger of the mare, but both Hound and Hawk would have let the horse trample them ere they allowed the young woman approach.

"Oh," she said, her frustration spilling out in an impatient stamp of her foot, "oh don't be so foolish, can't you see he's dying? Won't you let me help?"

I do not know if Hounds can smell truth, or if there was simply something in the girl's posture that calmed him, but whatever the reason, Two Shakes was the first to stand down. Orison, sharp-eyed, watched closely as the maid approached the fallen king but made no move to stop her.

Peter was by that point barely aware. He knew, in a very remote and strained sense, that she was kneeling by him now, pressing quick, firm hands to his side. It hurt too much for him to even feel it properly, but the look on her face told him more of his condition than actually feeling it ever could have.

"It's bad, so bad, so very bad," she murmured, and her hands kept moving, kept checking. She peeled back half-dried, sticking fabric, and she shook her head. "I don't think . . . Rya!" And the mare stepped forward smartly, though her nostrils still flared wide and red in wary anticipation. "Rya, come."

The mare came closer, and then closer still. She kept a wary eye on the other animals, though, and her ears remained pinned back flat against her skull. Tarva, cowed as only a stallion can be cowed by an angry mare, made no move to stop her approach and so eventually Rya stood directly above Peter as the maiden who had summoned her struggled to lift Peter to his feet. However the young woman was unequal to the task of bearing such a burden, and realised it almost at once. Turning beseeching eyes on Two Shakes, she said "come here! Here, boy!"

Two Shakes drew back in affront; one does not say "here, boy" to a Talking Dog, no matter how forgiving his nature.

"_Madam_," he began censoriously, but was unable to finish because the girl was instantly contrite.

"Oh! I am so sorry," she said, "I am sorry, I didn't know that you were— but come! Please, come, your friend is in a very bad way, and I cannot help him here."

"And how do we know you aren't a witch planning to kill him?" Orison demanded, peering keenly down at the maid from a branch higher up. The maybe-witch made a sound of horrified impatience.

"A witch! Oh, that's— look at him! Do you think I have need of any art to finish what a sword has already begun? He will die easily enough on his own without my ever touching him, and if you do not help me move him he will die here as we watch. I will not stand by and see it done; now HELP ME."

Two Shakes (whether moved by her plea or cowed by her tone it is impossible to say) came forward at once to help. He squirmed down on his stomach and wiggled in under Peter's arm. With the Hound bracing the King on one side and the maiden pulling from the other, they were at last able to hoist him up far enough to get him draped across the back of the nervous, dancing mare.

"Is she safe?" Two Shakes asked, casting a dubious glance at the creature that had so recently tried to stave in his skull.

"She is safe enough when she is not being harried by a Hound who ought to know better," the woman frowned. Two Shakes had the grace to duck his head.

"We thought you were a witch," he said.

"That is another point of grievance entirely," the lady decided, and laid a hand on the bridle of her mare, drawing the creature forward at a slow, steady pace. Tarva, keeping a respectful distance, followed along behind.

"Were you there when he was wounded?" the maid asked as they walked. "Did you see what happened? How long has he been in such a bad way?"

"Very long," Two Shakes decided. "He rode all this way from the battlefield to find you— of course that was when we still thought you were a witch."

"He rode?" She stared at the unconscious man in even greater horror. "Why, the fool!"

Two Shakes growled, and this time it was the maiden's turn to look discomfited.

"I am sorry," she said softly, for she knew how dogs are, Talking or otherwise. "I did not mean to speak so harshly of your friend. But surely he must have known he might die."

"I think he was counting on it," Orison said, from where he was wheeling lazily overhead. "Now where do you have a mind to set him down?"

"Here," the maid said, drawing her mare to a halt. The moss underfoot was soft and springy, and a tall tree provided a rude sort of shelter overhead. "It is the best we can do, I think. I'll need your help," she added, addressing Two Shakes, "to get him down again."

They managed it together, and once Peter had been laid out on the moss the young woman wrestled the breastplate from the knight's body, cast it aside and again examined the wound. At last she shook her head. Her forehead drew into deep lines of worry.

"It is bad," she said quietly. "So bad . . . I almost wish I did have some art, for I am not sure that I can fix this."

"Yet you think it is possible?" Two Shakes quivered hopefully.

"I think it may be." She chewed her lip, and sat back. "I do not know. It is possible that too much has changed since . . ." She looked up to where Orison now perched on a branch overhead. "Good Hawk, are you of a mind to act in service to this knight?"

"He is mine to serve, Madam," Orison said.

"Then fly, I charge you, and seek a small flower. It is about so big," she demonstrated with one hand that was bruised and cut from hard riding. "The flowers grow in clusters on a rod-shaped stem and the flower itself has five petals, each coming to a point. It grows in rocky soil, usually by water. I do not know if you can see colour, but by daylight it is dark yellow. It smells rather like spiced honey."

"You mean the Truth-Flower," Orison said, and the girl nodded.

"That is the vulgar name, yes," she said stiffly. "But in my time we called it Lion's Breath; it does so much more than you might suppose." Then she bent over her patient once more, leaving Orison to take off in search of the remedy she had requested.

Two Shakes sat silently by for quite some time, watching as the young woman did her best to make Peter comfortable. She shed her soaking-wet cloak, bundled it into a soft ball and used it to pillow the king's head. She was forced to rip away most of the fabric of his tunic that covered the wound, but she rolled it back as neatly as she could so it did not flap or catch on anything. Then she sat back, staring at the pale, still form, and watched him sleep.

Watching him sleep, she tried hard not to dislike him very much. It hadn't been a personal slight, really— she knew that. Nevertheless it pricked at her dignity to know he had thought her a witch. If he hadn't been more dead than alive, she might very well have slapped him and left him to sort his grievances on his own— goodness knew he must have an awful lot of them, if he would come so far in such a state for the slight chance that he might get to slay a witch. She wondered if knights made more of a habit of such things now than they had done in her day; somehow, she doubted it.

That was another problem— how very far gone "her day" really was. It had been a queer thing, her time in the lake. It felt as though she had only just jumped in, ad yet she knew it was not so. The journey in, the journey out . . . Rya might as easily have gone over a hedge as she had leaped into and out of that lake, but it was all wrong. It was as if they had gone over a hedge only to find that, in going over that hedge, time had suddenly run off without them when they were in the air. And so it seemed to her now— they had jumped in a pool, come out the same pool and yet time had run on without them while they were in there.

"I expect everyone is dead, now," she said, and felt very alone at the thought.

The young man whose fevered head was pillowed on what had once been her favourite cloak moaned, then, as if to ward off her sense of solitude, but she did not thank him for it; instead, she frowned down at him and laid an authoritative palm on his brow.

"Sleep," she warned him, "or else I must insist you seek another for you nurse, and I do not believe you are in any condition to do that."

It was, I think, just as well for Peter that he did not wake; she looked in deadly earnest.

"Madam," Two Shakes spoke with all the consummate gallantry of a Narnian lord, "it occurs to me that we do not have the privilege of your name."

"No," the maid agreed, still frowning a little, "I don't suppose you do." Then manners got the better of her lingering indignation and she added, "my name is Molly. And yours, sir?"

"Two Shakes, Madam." Two Shakes sat up a little taller.

"How do you do, Two Shakes," Molly said, and smiled.

We are all different people when we smile; Molly was no exception. Her smile chased away all the prickliness of her and left behind a quite pleasant, albeit very wet and cold, young lady. Two Shakes, in turn, wagged his tail, settled down on his belly and sidled a little closer to where she sat beside Peter.

"If you don't mind my asking, Ma'am," he said politely, "that is, Miss Molly— if you don't mind my asking, what were you doing in that lake?"

"We jumped in," said Molly, "very long ago. Or rather, Rya did, and I did not stop her. It—" she hesitated, then shrugged. "You may laugh, but it was really almost as though something pulled us in. We were certainly in no position to stay out of it."

"I see, I see," Two Shakes said, looking solemn. Molly studied him.

"Do you?" she asked gently.

"Not at all," Two Shakes sighed. Molly laughed, then, surprising them both.

"That's all right," she smiled. "I don't even really understand it myself. It simply didn't occur to me _not_ to go in; we had no other choice. Then we were in, and we went under. Rya swam, and we came up for air just as anyone might do after jumping into a lake, except when we came up it wasn't daylight, it was dark, and . . . quite a long time after. I'm not sure how long _exactly_, but when we were under water it was almost as if I could see time passing above us. The winter, mostly— I saw the winter, very long and dull and a little scary. And then spring, as we got nearer the surface again, and many springs more that came after, and now . . . now I don't know _when_ it is, and a knight thought I was a witch and tried to kill me and he _would_ have done too, I'm sure, if Rya hadn't taken charge just then, and now he's dying and I really should just _let_ him, since anybody who would travel so far just to kill something really _deserves_ to die, only . . . I can't let that happen. So I'm afraid it's all a bit much."

Two Shakes edged closer still. His great, broad head was now within reach of Molly's hand. Large, warm brown eyes studied the woman's troubled expression. He whined just a little in heartfelt sympathy.

"Oh," Molly smiled at seeing his concern, "don't worry, please. I'm sure it's fine. Only . . ." her voice caught just a little. "There were so many people. _My_ people, you know . . . they'll all be gone now, I expect, and to be honest I'm trying very hard not to think about that. My brother, my mother . . . I don't know if they got safely away before the winter or— or not."

And she shuddered, then, at imagining what "not" might have meant.

Two Shakes pressed close. It is an odd trick of large dogs to pretend they are so much smaller than they really are. They creep and sidle up as though you might perhaps fail to notice that a Great Hulking Thing is sidling over to you, and I am afraid that Talking Hounds do this just as much as the dumb ones, and it looks no less comical for all that they are able to talk. But Molly did not mind, because Two Shakes pressed his nose to her palm and his heart broke with hers; for dogs cannot be glad if you are not glad too.

"Perhaps," Two Shakes said, "there are other lakes, with other people in them; people you know."

Molly laughed, or tried to— it turned into a sob, and she buried her head in the velvet of the dog's coat to weep. Two Shakes nuzzled her, and whined, and was generally just very large and warm and solid— all good and comforting things for a girl who is soaked through to the skin from her time in the lake. A dress that had been warm enough when dry provided little protection now, and with her cloak under the head of the man who had been so determined to kill her . . . well, if Two Shakes had not been covering so much of her at that point she would likely have started to shiver.

"He told me it was what I had to do," she whispered, pressing her face to the silk of the Hound's ears. "He told me, and he is always true, even when I do not understand him . . . I just wish that sometimes he might explain a little better, a little more— even at _all_! For I cannot understand how losing my life and so many more lifetimes' worth of time in some vile pool can possibly be of any benefit to Narnia."

Two Shakes squirmed a little closer and lapped with solemn care at the tear-tracks on the girl's face.

"Thank you," she whispered. "May I . . ?" Then, with the Hound's permission, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug. They remained just so, Two Shakes as much in Molly's lap as he could possibly get (he was a very large dog, and she a rather slight woman, so it was not as much as either of them might have liked) and she pressed her face to his head until at last Orison returned, triumphant, with a clump of little yellow flowers in his talons.

O0O0O0O

"Pardon me, Madam," Orison danced a little on his branch, "but . . . you are quite sure you know what you're doing, are you? It seems most complex."

"It _is_ complex," Molly said, through clenched teeth. "It is terribly complex, and that is why I would prefer silence. If I am distracted I may crush them too much, and they will be useless, and _then_ what, I wonder, will happen to the knight who tried to kill me, and my horse besides?"

Orison ruffled his feathers in deep affront, but fell silent. He and Two Shakes watched closely as Molly worked with the flowers the Hawk had fetched. She rolled them around in her palms, bruising them gently, crushing them just enough to suit her purposes. She did not crush them as much as Peter had done when casting them into the water; the task for which she required them was more for delicate than a bit of crude interrogation. She did not seek to win a confession from a reluctant subject, or drag truth from the depths of a lake; she sought instead to restore something that had been lost, and I find it worthwhile to tell you that as she worked the flowers she also had to work very hard to forget the look of grim death that had been in the face of the man she was even now working to save.

"There is something very backward about all of this," she sighed unhappily, and then chose from among the already mangled scraps of Peter's tunic one that she thought might serve as a bandage. The flowers she pressed to his wound and the bandage she pressed on top. With bits and strips of tunic torn away and tied together she managed to bind the flowers in place, then sat back on her heels and studied her handiwork.

"Do you do much of this, then?" Orison wanted to know, once he was certain that the delicate part of the procedure had passed. "Much . . . curing? Herb-work?"

Molly brushed her petal-damp hands on her skirt, and nodded. "I did it just today," she said, and then flinched at her own words. "I mean . . . I did it that day. The day I . . ." she shook her head. "Not many people know how; not many people have the patience to learn. They're such a tricky thing, herbs, and Lion's Breath is particularly complicated. It has hundreds of uses, but you have to prepare it just right or else you're left with nothing more than a bit of syrup that may or may not convince somebody to tell the truth.

"I spent so many years, learning how— and now," the thought struck her suddenly; forcibly, "I may be the only one in all of Narnia who knows how to work with it; that is, work with it properly, I mean. The truth bit, that's the easy part; if you're not too determined to make a science of the thing then you just scrunch them up, and preferably boil them first, and you have a reasonably effective elixir. There's no style to it, you see. But the other uses take a great deal of study, and the studying takes a very long time. And who is left to teach it, now? Because after the winter, who would there be left to know _what_ to teach? Lion's Breath only grows in Narnia, the only ones who studied the art were Narnians . . . and me."

Two Shakes, deeply engrossed in sniffing the poultice on Peter's side, spared a moment to raise his head, which he tilted enquiringly at Molly.

"Are you not Narnian, then, Miss Molly?"

"I am," she said. "But first, I was something else. I came from somewhere else. And I thought — we all thought — that it was going to last forever."

She wrapped her arms around herself, got to her feet, and stared down at the sorry heap of wounded knight at her feet.

"It was," she said bitterly, "a very pretty thought. But then the tree was cut down, and the Witch found her way in. The winter, it . . . it came on so fast. Nearly everybody fled, but some of us waited. We meant to fight, of course, but we also thought — hoped — that maybe . . . but we were wrong, and we waited too long. Then _he_ came— Aslan." The way she said the name, her mouth shaping round it with almost painful longing, made Orison's feathers flatten; it made Two Shakes sit back, quietly, on his haunches. Aslan's name always does things like that, you see, when it is spoken by somebody who knows him.

"He said that if I wanted to secure the future of Narnia, I needed to ride North. So I left them, my whole family, and Rya and I rode to the North. I tried to turn back . . ." she faltered, remembering the shame of it. "I tried to turn back quite a few times. Each time he stopped me. I went on. We came to the mere, and . . . we went in. And we came out. And now it is years and years and years afterward and I am the only one in all of Narnia who knows that Lion's Breath is not some crude form of truth-potion; rather it is everything, absolutely _everything_, that is vital to woodlore, to medicines— why, unless one has a bouquet of fireflowers ready at hand (and a pretty feat that would be, too) there is none better than Lion's Breath, provided it is in the hands of one who knows how to make it do as—"

But she did not get to finish the tirade that had been building to a form of hysteria, because at that point Peter gasped, groaned, and writhed on the ground so that Molly left off her speech to drop once more to her knees and forcibly persuade her patient to return to his back.

"Idiot," she scolded as she settled him on his back once more. "Two Shakes told me, you know, what you did— refusing to return to your camp where you might have been healed, coming instead to seek and kill a witch you could not even have been sure existed! And here, you see," she continued to lecture the unconscious knight as she arranged the sodden lump of woollen cloak under his head, "you see, you foolish thing, there is no witch! There never was, and goodness only knows why anyone thought there was, unless perhaps there was something odd about the mere, when we were in it all those years . . . but that hardly matters, now. There is no witch here, there is only a maid who can _well_ understand why some might be tempted to take a knife to you. Foolish, foolish—"

And if it had not been clear to them before, the Hawk and Hound, looking on, would surely by this point have understood it was not truly Peter she longed to berate. It was somebody else; somebody who was, by virtue of many years gone by, far beyond her ability to scold.

Molly seemed to have run out of scoldings, though; she fell silent and stared at the inert form beside her, the young man whose head still rested on what remained of her cloak. Her expression softened as she studied him, seeing him for the first time not as her would-be murderer or even as a wounded knight in need of succour, but simply a young man who had fled from a bad choice.

"Fool," she sighed again, but this time, she did not mean Peter. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her forehead on them, wrapping her arms around her legs as though she were a little girl. Two Shakes whined, and leaned in a little.

"Madam?" he said. Molly pressed her face to her knees, and shook her head.

"He said it was the way to protect Narnia. To ensure the future of— of _everything_. He said that it wouldn't be as I imagined it, but that I would see it happen all the same. And instead, what do I see? A knight who spooks at imaginary witches and nearly rides himself dead chasing them. I should have stayed in the water."

Orison ruffled his feathers in ill-concealed scorn.

"And a lot of good staying in the water would have done anyone," he snapped. Molly flinched and then ducked her head, shamed.

"I just don't know," she murmured.

She cast a sideways glance at Peter; it was tricky to tell in the moonlight, but it seemed as though his colour might already be a little better. She tried to feel some sense of accomplishment, the way she had the first time she had rolled the flowers according to her mother's careful instruction. She remembered how she had watched the poultice restore a Narnian soldier who should have been beyond all aid. Then she thought of the soldier, her mother, and everybody else who must have been gone for so very long, now, and with a hollow sob she curled up beside the knight, tucking herself tight in a small, damp knot of skirts. She was wet, cold and miserable, but Two Shakes crept close once more, Peter slept without thrashing, and Molly, in spite of herself, was soon asleep too.

O0O0O0O

_She stood on the grassland overlooking the mere. The trees were young again, the ground had never been touched by frost. There was only __the water, the sky, the wood . . . and Him._

"_Daughter." He looked exactly as he had the last time she saw him__—__ a Lion the size of the woodcutter's cottage. Had it really been so long ago that he stood and blocked her path? Time didn't seem to matter, now._

"_Aslan__—__ oh, Aslan," she flew to him the way they had all done, when they were children. She wrapped her arms around the beautiful mane, burying her face in impossible richness. "Are you the only thing here that has not changed?"_

_His purr was barely audible, yet it shook the very ground on which they stood._

"_You know I am."_

"_Yes . . ." she rooted closer. "Oh but why did it all have to change? Everything is gone and done, and__—__" the injustice welled up within her, and she stepped back to look up at him. "You said it would save Narnia! You said that if I rode North, it would save Narnia, and I would see it done. But what sort of Narnia is there left to save? Just a lot of bleeding people riding around, trying to kill other people they think are witches__—__ oh," sighing, "I _do_ need to let that go, don't I?"_

_The Lion's whiskers twitched. "It would be for the best," he agreed._

"_But . . . can't you tell me, at least, how what I did can possibly have saved Narnia? It can't hurt anything to tell me now, can it? I mean, now that I am dead."_

"_Daughter," the Lion looked at her, "why do you think you are dead?"_

"_Why, because I am hundreds of years old, really, and I am here talking to you." Molly blinked at him in confusion. "Aren't I__, then?"_

_The Lion's breath __—__ the _real_ thing __—__ wafted over her as he sighed. It was sweet and rich and even better than the heady, spicy fragrance of the flower that had been named for it. She felt as though she grew a little taller simply for having been breathed on._

"_You are not__ dead," he said. "Not in the manner that you mean, although it is true that you are nearer the thing which is called death than any other in this world. You have a right to claim death, if you so choose. But for now you live, and though you stand here before me you also slumber on the banks of the lake beside a knight who did as you once did."_

"_Who, I?" Molly frowned. "I never tried to kill a witch."_

"_No__; you rode to the North to save those you best loved, and so did he."_

"_He mustn't have made a very good job of it either, then," Molly muttered, then ducked her head as the Lion growled. "Sorry," she said, and meant it._

"_He did as he __believed was right, and in the manner of all the best leaders he saw and was grieved by his error long before I needed to instruct him in it." Then the Lion looked at Molly in such a way that she suddenly remembered all those times she had needed to be instructed in the error of her ways. She had the grace to blush._

"_Is he a leader, then?" she wondered. "A good one?"_

_A very small smile ruffled the whiskers of the Lion.__ "He is. But I would not like that to sway you unduly in the choice you must make."_

"_What choice?"_

"_The one I give to you now__. Narnia is saved, and the reason I charged you to ride North lies by your side. He will recover, and he will return to the people he loves to lead them home again." _

_Molly regarded the Lion in confusion._

"_But__—__" she said, and hesitated. "Why are you telling me all this?" For she knew it was not the usual way of the Lion to do so._

"_I tell it to you so that you can make your choice. Daughter, he will return to the people he leads and the family he loves. The kingdom you love is whole and well, though it may not look it from here. Narnia awaits and can be your home again; that home which you already gave much to keep. Or," the steady amber gaze held hers, "you can return with me."_

_Molly's heart leaped._

"_The last journey?" she breathed._

"_The very last," the Lion agreed.__ "You may claim it as your own; you have been in this world more than long enough to have that right. If that is your choice, I will grant it."_

"_Oh!" she cried, and her eyes shone. "Oh, yes!"_

"_Make your answer with care, daughter. It is a journey you would make one day in all events, and the other choice would give you many years in the kingdom you love. None know better than I how much you sacrificed to keep Narnia."_

"_But it wasn't Narnia, really, was it?" Molly said. "It was never Narnia I missed so much or hated to leave__—__ Aslan, it was only ever _you_."_

_The Lion bent his great head and looked into the radiant face of the woman before him. He smiled._

"_This, I have always known. And now you do, too."_

O0O0O0O

Peter awoke with a start. He flinched in anticipation of the pain he knew must come, and then was shocked to find it did not. Instead there was only birdsong, and an early morning sunrise that gilded the valley and bathed the mist rolling off the lake in a rich, golden glow.

"What—" he reached fearfully for his side, and felt . . . nothing. Only a cool breeze where the air kissed skin exposed by a shredded, mangled tunic. He tugged clumsily at a scrap of cloth that would not give way; at last it came off in his hand and he stared at the blood-stained clump of fabric. Tiny, curled-up flowers tumbled from within; once dark yellow, they were now stained rusty-red, curling brown around the edges and had definitely seen better days.

"What . . ." he said again, and then Two Shakes was on him, yelping joyously at finding the King restored, and Orison danced from one foot to the other on the branch overhead, spreading his wings in jubilation. Tarva, standing not far off, freed from the least comfortable parts of his tack, grazed his fill and appeared to be quite peaceably accepting of his current lot in life.

"What . . ." Peter said yet again, and looked grievously confused. "Am I dead?"

"No, you are not, though that's not for lack of trying on your part."

The voice was not one whose speaker he might have named, but he knew it all the same; he had heard it in his sleep all that night long, and when he looked on her now he felt very small and wretchedly ashamed, that he could have thought her a witch.

She stood before him in a mostly-dried gown the colour of the midnight sky. A silver chain was wound round about her waist in some quaint, centuries-old style that no woman in Narnia had used since before the frost came, and yet for all that she looked so very far out of time, she was as solid and real as anything else on that hill. Her mare stood at her side, and looked very horsy and normal and not at all like any enchanted creature might do. The maid's hands were cut and scraped and stained with the yellow juices of the flowers she had used to heal him. Her long hair was more free than tied, and had been made rather a windblown, tangled mess by a ride that had begun years before. There were so many freckles on her face that it took Peter a minute to even realise she was scowling at him.

She was, in fact, so painfully, clearly human that he wondered if she would ever be able to forgive him for making such an error in taking her for a witch. Then the corner of her mouth twisted up just a bit in an odd little half-smile of sorts, and Peter felt the tightness in his chest ease.

"Madam," he said, and struggled to his feet— pain did not slow him, now, but a night spent on the cold ground with a wet cloak under his head certainly made rising a tricky business. He breathed easily, though, and if his greatest discomfort was that of a stiff neck then he supposed he had nothing to complain of. "Madam, I cannot help but think that I owe you my life."

"You do," she agreed, "but that's all right; I've no need of your life, you see, and all I did was give it back to you. That's not really the most important thing now anyway, though, is it? You've got much more pressing matters to hand." She looked very solemn, then, and he wondered how a girl who lived in a lake could possibly know that he needed to return to camp to find a way to order a retreat from a battle that could not be won.

"I failed them," he said, and was shocked by his own confession. The maiden, too, looked surprised.

"Did you?" she asked politely. "I'm afraid I can't agree."

"But . . ." he stared at her, confused. "You can't even know. How can you know? You were—" it seemed rude to point it out, and yet it was truth. "You were in the lake."

"Not always," she said. "And you may think you failed, but actually, it just worked out in a different way than you expected. You set out to free these people from a tyrant, did you not?"

Peter, not questioning how she could know this, nodded.

"And so you have done, though the tyrant is not the one you first believed. The ruler who would have taken their mines, land and homes for his own will not emerge the victor from this battle, and that will have been your doing." She tipped her head to the side almost as though marvelling at the thought. "It was really very neatly done."

"I— I suppose . . ." poor Peter felt woefully at sea. The young woman who faced him smiled kindly on his confusion.

"It's all right," she said, "I made the same mistake too, you know; I thought it must go exactly as I imagined it would, but instead . . . Narnia is saved for a different purpose than I believed, and by a means I could not have foreseen. But hark!" her eyes lit, and she looked toward the hill that he had travelled the night before; a night that seemed, in some ways, to have taken place centuries ago. "The dogs come."

And so it was, for Two Shakes suddenly tossed back his head and gave full cry in answer to the faintest of howls that was blown down to them over the hill. The stable pack was drawing near.

"They are looking for you," the maiden smiled, turning back to Peter. "They will fetch you back to your people."

"And what of your people?" Peter was concerned. "Have you a home here?"

"No," she said, and did not sound grieved or alarmed but simply matter-of-fact, "I do not." She trailed one fond hand down the nose of the mare at her side. "Our home is not here anymore."

"Then will you not return with us?" he entreated. "If I owe you my life, at least allow me to make you a home. Anywhere in Narnia might be yours; only ask it of me and I shall give it to you."

"That," the maid scolded, "is a very rash promise." And then she smiled to see Peter blush at the truth of it. "Make no more rash promises, King of Narnia," she instructed. "Such is the instruction from one who knows you far better than I; he urges you to heed it. And I thank you, too, for your very kind offer, but . . . what I said is nothing more or less than truth. My home is not here, anymore."

At these words the early-morning mist rolling up off the lake seemed to thicken, gathering round her like a gentle golden embrace. The mare at her side appeared untroubled by these occurrences; she nuzzled the hand of the maid, and the sunlight danced through the moisture, bathing them both in a rich golden glow. From the depths of the cloud, the girl began to beam.

"Ride," she urged Peter, "return to the people who are waiting for you, and I shall do the same. Take your hounds to heel, and your hawk in hand, and if I were you," her eyes danced, now, shining in anticipation of seeing at long last the only home she had ever cared to know, "I would not fear attack on your return. I do not think there are any who would dare harm the knight who has lain with the witch of the western mere."

And before the clouds consumed her entirely, before the golden glow brightened to such brilliance that the others were forced to shield their eyes from the sight until it had cleared, leaving them standing alone on the hill— Peter could have sworn he saw her wink.

O0O0O0O

O0O0O0O

**A.N.:** That's part two of two, which means this is done! If you're desperately hankering to see what comes of Peter's return to camp, just head over to _Worlds in Dream_ and read The Grim Place. Otherwise, that's all of it! As I mentioned already, this has been brewing for quite a while. I love the song I drew from to write this, but the chief failing of it, I felt, was that it really tells us nothing about the lady in question and I was determined to remedy that. And so . . . I made her Molly.

Molly is, I'll confess, a character in her own right; the very first Narnia fic I ever came up with, back when I was quite young, centred around Molly and her brother and a few other characters, most of whom will in all likelihood never see the light of day simply because they are the product of my Brain Back Then and I would not be so cruel as to subject you to that. But I do love them for being a part of my own personal Narnian history; I love the adventures I imagined they might have, and since I am not so bloodthirsty as I was in my childhood I decided that perhaps Molly didn't die in the Long Winter as I once imagined she might, and so would serve admirably (albeit reluctantly!) as the witch of the western mere.

Whether or not I made the right choice in sparing her for this purpose is, I suppose, your call to make. Thank you so very much for the feedback you've left so far, and please let me know what you thought of the conclusion. New chapter of _Kingdoms Come_ should be posted in a few days' time, so if you are following that, do keep an eye out!


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